THE PILLARS OF THE FALLING HOUSE--AN INTERVIEW.

Happily not one among many thousands of the myriads of families in which men and women are set in this world, are fated to experience such a shock--such a moral earthquake as was undergone at Redcot on the morning on which Susie Crabtree and Jack Prior were arrested there. How do the tragically exceptional innocent people to whom such shocks come behave on these unique occasions? Is it a fact that there is a limit to our capacity for pain--that when a mother and her child, or brothers and sisters, grown up men and women, perish together in a fire or by the upsetting of a boat, the surviving members of the families--the husband and father who is at once a widower and childless, the parents bereft of sons and daughters by a single blow--are stunned as well as stricken, and rendered for a time at least mercifully incapable of realising the extent of their misfortune? Do they mourn, but with not more bitter and excessive grief than a sensitive man or woman might have felt for the loss of one human creature who was dear?

This may be true in a family shipwreck such as had befallen the Priors, the nature of which, to people of honourable antecedents, who have led honest and well-regulated lives, is as incredible as it is rare. Susie and Jack were gone under trying circumstances, but these were so astounding that it was impossible fully to realise them till an interval had passed.

There was much more loud lamentation in the kitchen than in the drawing-room--and in the former region a sense of mournful enjoyment soon entered into the proceedings, as into a funeral feast, when the funeral is not one in which the guest is nearly concerned. The sombre satisfaction in this instance had the agreeable addition of a strong spice of excitement. Miss Susie that was, and Mr. Jack charged with robbing a bank between them, perhaps lodged in Newton Jail by that time, was dreadful, but it was also thrilling.

Upstairs, the family, and the woman who had tacitly become a member of it for the moment, looked at each other in blank wonder and consternation. What did it mean? What grain of truth, of probability at least, had led to such an undreamt-of catastrophe?

John Prior pulled himself together and walked heavily to his study, to lock himself in and take counsel with himself, to bury his head in his hands, and ask himself--was this the retribution which Lambert Crabtree had threatened? How had it been brought about? Could he--John Prior--have prevented it at one time by a word of his mouth, which, if spoken now, if shouted in the market-place, would be wholly in vain. Jack and Susie branded for life, proclaimed common thieves! Perhaps they had been drawn into some weak compromise, which constituted them partners in the guilt of a far greater sinner. He, their father, could not, for the life of him, in spite of his long apprenticeship to spleen and gloom, conceive that the girl and boy--they were still girl and boy to him--had committed a bare-faced, vulgar crime, as gross an intellectual blunder as it was a heinous moral offence. Why, it was so egregious an error, by the simplest reasoning, as to argue a lack of reason amounting to fatuous imbecility or hair-brained insanity in the man or woman of the rank of the Priors who fell into the delusion. What were the inducements which could lead to such a mania? Susie’s husband’s difficulties, Jack’s scrapes and debts--supposing he had contracted more. These might be alleged in a court of law, but they were totally inadequate.

In the drawing-room Bennet Gray roused herself in time to stop Ally from asking with round-eyed speculation and great glibness in leaping at a conclusion, whether Aunt Susie and Uncle Jack had been traitors or highwaymen, as Aunt Susie had seemed to say, and whether the gentlemen who had come for them were going to take them to the Tower? But surely nobody would think of cutting off Aunt Susie’s head with its fringe. Uncle Jack would not let them, he would fight for both. Miss Gray took the children to their nurse, to learn more prosaic annals of arrests from her gossip with her fellow-servants than were to be drawn from a child’s history of England.

When Bennet went back to the women’s sanctuary, she found Mrs. Prior sitting patiently in her usual place, surrounded by her books and the materials for her work, though she was doing nothing unless seeking to recover herself.

Jane was more restless. She was moving here and there, coming always back to her mother’s side and appealing to her. ‘Mother, what can be the cause of this affronting outrage? Mother, what is to be done?’

‘My dear, your father will see to it. Mr. Crabtree has gone in with the others, he will do all that is necessary. No doubt everything will be cleared up presently.’

It was the strangest, most pathetic thing to hear Jane--so self-reliant in her own line--so tempted to undervalue what was apart from it--and so accustomed to regard her mother as good and dear, but as long left behind in the march of mind, thus turning and looking up to the elder woman’s broader human experience and deeper knowledge of life in the hour of trial. It was equally strange and pathetic, in the order of nature, which is older and wiser in its instincts than any acquired knowledge, to see how Mrs. Prior bore herself. She had been content to bide her time, would have been more than content to bide it for ever, rather than have shared in such an awakening. But now she instantly resumed her place as one of the heads of the house, one of the bearers of its burdens, and showed herself ready, strong in her wifely and motherly instincts, for whatever demand might be made on her.

There was another woman who rose to meet trouble when it came to those dear to her with the marvellous courage and self-forgetfulness which are instincts with the higher natures among the sex. These qualities contest so successfully with feminine weakness as to render women stronger than men on certain occasions, not only ‘ministering angels’ but rulers born for adversity.

Bennet left the mother and daughter together, and went boldly to Mr. Prior’s study door, where she knocked for admittance.

There was a muttered protest within, a slow, reluctant tread to the door, which was unlocked, and the applicant had to stand for a moment the stare of utter astonishment and displeasure cast on the intruder. In the days of her full favour with Mrs. Prior and Jane, Bennet had never made much more way with the master of the house than was implied in being tolerated by him, and regarded, almost against his will, with a man’s--a clever man’s--instinctive admiration for a beautiful and quick-witted woman.

‘May I speak with you, Mr. Prior?’ petitioned Bennet quickly, as an excuse for her being there.

‘Well, Miss Gray, I should have thought that it would be tolerably plain to you I am engaged this morning,’ he protested, with almost vehement sarcasm. ‘This is not a time for unnecessary discussion.’ Then he thought better of it, and held the door for her to pass in. ‘Perhaps you are right,’ he corrected himself formally, with a latent bitterness in the concession. ‘It is better to act without delay when it can be done. It is out of the question for you to remain here, under the circumstances, a moment longer than you can help. I acknowledge that, after what has happened, it might be as much as your reputation is worth, and might be fatal to your prospects as a teacher. I am perfectly sensible of all that can be said on the subject, so that no apology is needed. No doubt my grandchildren will miss your valuable instruction, but the loss cannot be helped, unfortunately. Any inconvenience caused by your going so suddenly will be temporary, and is not worth mentioning when graver matters have to be considered,’ he said, with a sardonic smile that was well-nigh ghastly on his face at that moment. ‘Allow me to write you a cheque for the quarter’s salary. Ah! I forgot, my cheque-book is on Crabtree’s Bank; but there is money in the house--Jack brought a supply.’ He stopped abruptly; Jack’s name had been too much for him.

‘Oh! no, no, Mr. Prior; that is not what I meant,’ cried out Bennet, who had been too much abashed and distressed to interrupt him before. The ordeal would have been severe under much more favourable conditions, and it required all her firmness and devotion to another to face it. ‘I want no money. I am not going away--unless, indeed, you send me. I am not here as a schoolmistress. I knew your son before I came. Oh! don’t you understand? You have been young yourself.’

‘I can guess that there has been some wretched love affair,’ admitted Mr. Prior sternly, ‘and that you have probably considered yourself engaged in marriage to my son.’

Bennet bowed her head, which was hanging low enough already.

‘So you came beforehand to spy the land. I shall not make any further comment than that it was ingenious of you,’ he said, with a sneer.

‘It was very wrong--I see that now,’ she said, with straightforward simplicity and with more composure, as she made the confession, ‘but you will not choose this moment to punish me. Your son is innocent of my coming here; he knew nothing of it. You will forgive me, and let me share this extraordinary calamity and insult with the rest of the family.’

‘Miss Gray, you are foolish and romantic, as well as scheming--excuse me, but I cannot avoid saying it. However, I am not your judge or my son’s. I can only make some things clear to you which I must conclude you do not rightly comprehend. I am not the prosperous man you may have imagined me to be when you received Jack’s unwarrantable addresses. I am poor; I was on the verge of ruin before the event of the morning. Good God, do you know what it all means?’ He started up and began to pace the room, unable to restrain himself. ‘The miserable lad with whom you have entangled yourself and his sister are lying under a criminal charge. Their family must bear the consequences of their misfortune or their misdoing; in this there is no choice. But the best thing that you can do for yourself--and you have ample reason for doing it--is to break off an engagement which ought never to have been formed, and cut the whole connection.’

‘Never!’ exclaimed Bennet, indignantly raising her comely head high enough now. ‘What, give up Jack! Jack, who sought me for myself alone, because he is unjustly charged with a crime of which, you must be well aware, he is no more capable than you or I, or an innocent baby! Desert my friends--though you refuse to own me as a friend--when they are in trouble! What do you take me for, Mr. Prior? Oh! it is not I, it is you who do not understand. And I have more to tell you, sir. You seem to think I coveted your supposed wealth and position, when I listened to your son. The truth is I would not listen to him till he consented to go to one of the colonies and seek to make a home for us both there, where I might have worked with and for him, without degrading him and me in his people’s eyes. I declined to become either a suppliant for their bounty or a dependant upon it. Then, during his absence, I succeeded to my cousin’s fortune; for I am not poor, like most schoolmistresses, I am rich; I am fit to marry a squire’s son, if money was the only consideration.’

‘What! more deception and manœuvring, Miss Gray,’ was Mr. Prior’s sole cutting rejoinder.

‘Yes, manœuvring, if you will have it,’ she said desperately. ‘I wished to learn for myself the real character of Jack’s friends and of his relations with them. I was vain enough to imagine that I might help to make peace. It was silly and arrogant, and I see that I have offended you and Mrs. Prior beyond hope of forgiveness. Still I meant no harm. But never mind me. There are so many much more important things to be thought of now, and I am sure no time should be lost. Mr. Prior, for your son’s sake, forgive me, and let me help you,’ implored Bennet, looking up into John Prior’s face with wistful, beseeching eyes.

‘And do you think I could accept help, whatever you mean by the term, from a girl like you?’ he fretted and fumed in his pride and sorrow. ‘I am more bound than ever to protect you as far as I can from the evil consequences of your association with any member of my family. I should hope I have some conscience left me. Apart from that, I should have to answer to your relations and guardians for availing myself of your mad generosity.’

‘I have no relations and few friends,’ she told him simply, ‘none to whom I am accountable, or who will not be satisfied with any explanation I may give them. I was a very lonely woman when your son met and sought and won me, till death and beyond death, whatever you may say or do. My fortune was left to me unconditionally. I am of age; I can do with it what I will. I would give it to Jack this moment if he were here, and would take it. I desire nothing better than to spend any portion of it, or all of it, on his behalf. When I think of it you cannot prevent me, but it would be wiser and more becoming if we were to act in concert, and do what is necessary for him together. Indeed, I do not wish to make myself conspicuous, to come forward in a way that would vex and mortify anybody. I would much rather that I was not heard of at all in the matter. I only ask a small thing as a great favour--that you will make use of my money for Jack’s benefit.’

‘The proposal is perfectly preposterous; it cannot be entertained for a second,’ persisted John Prior, doggedly. ‘I am not come to such a pass as that implies. I still have means to defend my son. I can meet the legal expenses to which I suppose you refer. And even if my resources failed there are others to whom I could apply without having recourse to a stranger, a girl who comes badly enough off in the business as it is.’

‘Oh, surely not a stranger.’ She objected to the harshly-sounding word, and protested against it hotly. ‘And not a girl who is not accountable for what she does with her eyes open, and with the full consent of her judgment no less than her heart. The father of a daughter like Jane Prior ought not to deny women brains and moral responsibility. Dear Mr. Prior, listen to reason. I have thought it all out within the last hour. I could not help it--so please don’t blame me for presuming to interfere in your affairs.’

He shook his head impatiently, and turned from her, but she followed him.

‘I know Jack got money from the bank for you before it failed, but a considerable sum was to be sent to the manager at Kershaw to provide for the men’s wages. You made the arrangement in my hearing last night. Mr. Crabtree of Haybridge is as much interested in the case as you are, and I know you can depend upon him as an old friend; but it is his brother’s bank which has stopped payment, and no doubt he banked there also. Besides, there is Mrs. Lambert Crabtree to be thought of in addition to her brother.’

Still he stood immovable. She put her hand upon his arm in her urgent pleading.

‘Do let me be your banker for the time, just till you can look about and form your plans, if you prefer it so. Let me consult some of the great lawyers who were my cousin Josh’s fellows and friends. They offered to help me on his death. If I ask them, their knowledge and experience will be at your service--at Jack’s service--do you hear, sir? You cannot deprive your son of any advantage at this pass though the accusation seems so preposterous that it ought to be dismissed without a question. You will not break my heart by continuing to decline to let me do what I can to help him. I will do it--whether you refuse or accept my assistance; but I put it to you whether there should be discord between us at such a time, between Jack’s father and the woman who, if he and she live, will be Jack’s wife.’